WCML landslip Carstairs

[Mike_Walker]

The quality of management is important, not just in general terms but specifically at individual levels.  Much of the current issues at Avanti stem from the attitudes of a former MD who was particularly unpleasant towards his employees who have reacted in an understandable way.  Elsewhere, we have the opposite, people like Mark Hopwood at GWR or the late Adrian Shooter when at Chiltern who inspire their teams and will get them to go the extra mile to get the job done.  Since Adrian left Chiltern morale has hit the floor exemplified by the Turbo which ran around for several days with its branding skilfully amended to read: "Chiltern Railways sadly a part of Arriva, a DB company."  Mark Hopwood once said to me: "Treat your staff as you would expect to be treated.  If you treat them like s**t don't be surprised if they treat you with contempt and become bolshee."

 

It's not confined to the railways.  We had a supermarket here which got a new manager who was a right bar-steward to his staff and not much better towards his customers.  The staff morale collapsed and the customers suffered as a result.  After he departed it took ages for things to recover by which time the company had overlooked its lease was expiring and a rival moved in and, in effect, chucked them out!

[wagonbasher]

23 hours ago, Legend said:

 

Interesting Kev .  So was it that the culvert was blocked  or was it excessive rain ? As I said in previous post West Central Scotland not exactly short of rainfall . 

 

I was travelling South from Edinburgh on the A702 through Biggar on the 30th.  The rain fall in Edinburgh the previous night and on Friday until about 12.00 was relentless.   As we came through biggar which is not far from Carstairs we were diverted North as the A702 was closed.  Our journey was constantly interrupted by one way working through surface water floods on the road.  All the way to the  A74(M) massive queues were joining our road diverted off the A720 (I think) which had also closed for flooding.  Then the news that the A74(M) was closed for flooding.  Lucky for us, heading South, we joined just South of the closure although we had to thread through massive North bound queues to get to the motorway and the river which may be the juvenile Clyde looked very swollen.  Dumfries also flooded that night further South so it was very very wet.

 

Andy

[jjb1970]

10 hours ago, Mike_Walker said:

The quality of management is important, not just in general terms but specifically at individual levels.  Much of the current issues at Avanti stem from the attitudes of a former MD who was particularly unpleasant towards his employees who have reacted in an understandable way.  Elsewhere, we have the opposite, people like Mark Hopwood at GWR or the late Adrian Shooter when at Chiltern who inspire their teams and will get them to go the extra mile to get the job done.  Since Adrian left Chiltern morale has hit the floor exemplified by the Turbo which ran around for several days with its branding skilfully amended to read: "Chiltern Railways sadly a part of Arriva, a DB company."  Mark Hopwood once said to me: "Treat your staff as you would expect to be treated.  If you treat them like s**t don't be surprised if they treat you with contempt and become bolshee."

 

It's not confined to the railways.  We had a supermarket here which got a new manager who was a right bar-steward to his staff and not much better towards his customers.  The staff morale collapsed and the customers suffered as a result.  After he departed it took ages for things to recover by which time the company had overlooked its lease was expiring and a rival moved in and, in effect, chucked them out!

 

I think it is more leadership, leadership and management are often conflated but they're really two very different things. The world has lots of perfectly competent managers who have limited leadership ability, equally I've worked for some inspiring leaders who happily admitted they couldn't manage anything.

I also think empowering staff is important, people who are trusted to use their professional skills and initiative (noting this needs to be within applicable rules, especially in safety critical industries) tend to be not only more productive but happier in their roles.

[ikcdab]

On 02/01/2023 at 09:31, Mark Saunders said:

The privatised chickens are coming home to roost, we want the private sector to run things but want to call all the shots.

 

You can’t have it both ways!

 

 

Not really. Network rail is government owned.  

[Bernard Lamb]

10 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

I think it is more leadership, leadership and management are often conflated but they're really two very different things. The world has lots of perfectly competent managers who have limited leadership ability, equally I've worked for some inspiring leaders who happily admitted they couldn't manage anything.

I also think empowering staff is important, people who are trusted to use their professional skills and initiative (noting this needs to be within applicable rules, especially in safety critical industries) tend to be not only more productive but happier in their roles.

When I started work I soon found out the difference. Managers do things right while leaders do the right things.

Bernard

 

I should add that when Michael Edwards arrived at British Leyland and started to weed out the 'yes men' quite a  few very senior people found out the hard way.

Edited January 6, 2023 by Bernard Lamb
point added

[The Stationmaster]

20 hours ago, Wheatley said:

Never mind nurses, doctors and ambulance staff, even the TSSA is on strike ! (well, some of it ...) 

When I retired from the big railway TSSA wrote and asked me if I would wish to continue my membership because they could continue to 'represent me' in my new situation.  I politely replied that as they had been utterly useless on the occasions during my employed years when I actually required some 'representation'.  I added that their appointed legal advisors (who they had recommended me to use to check my NDA agreement on leaving) were useless and knew less about employment law than I did.  So not surprisingly I turned down their offer of 'continuing representation should I need it'.   And they have done absolutely nothing for railway pensioners so it's been money well saved.

 

In fact when I was involved in a wrangle with the Inland Revenue over personal use of 'On Call' cars TSSA had been, they said, dealing with the issue with IR for several years (it affected quite a number of people).  My then MP sorted it for me with IR in less than a month and IR advised me, in their letter accepting my case,  that they knew nothing of the TSSA seeking to get things clarified. 

 

Back to the hole in the WCML?

[woodenhead]

It's all done:

https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/west-coast-mainline-repair-works-completed

 

And looking at the Culvert, apart from possibly some plastic tubing (which may have already been there) it looks untouched, just the embankment to reconconstruct.

 

 

And the length of fill indicates it was two embankment failures on that side:

Edited January 6, 2023 by woodenhead

[Mike_Walker]

Now all that's needed is some trains!